Space: The Final Frontier, or Just Another Profit Center for the Pentagon?
📰 THE STORY: Axios reports that global powers view space as the next battlefield, with China and Russia developing capabilities, and the US leading a 'revived Star Wars' effort, exemplified by Space Command's role in a hypothetical Caracas operation to capture Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro. 🔍 WHAT THEY'RE NOT TELLING YOU: Historical Context: The US has been actively pursuing the
militarization of space for decades, long before current 'threats'. Project West Ford in 1961 deployed millions of copper needles into orbit, sparking international outcry. The Strategic Defense Initiative ('Star Wars') was announced in 1983, not 'rebranded and revived' in recent years. The Outer Space Treaty of 1967, which the US signed, explicitly prohibits placing weapons of mass destruction in
orbit, but leaves loopholes for conventional weapons, which the US has aggressively exploited. Double Standard: Axios frames 'Chinese satellite close-approaches' and 'reported Russian development of nukes for space' as novel threats, while omitting the US's own unparalleled military spending and capabilities in space. The US is the only nation to have conducted anti-satellite missile tests that
created lasting debris fields (Operation Burnt Frost in 2008), yet China and Russia are presented as the primary aggressors. The 'capture of Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro' is presented as a successful operation, not a failed, internationally condemned coup attempt by US-backed mercenaries, as actually occurred with 'Operation Gideon' in 2020. Follow the Money: The military-industrial complex